Fantastic Four #2: It’s A Marvel Comic 1

Fantastic Four #2, page 18, panel 1

Uncredited Writer: Stan Lee

Uncredited Penciler: Jack Kirby

Uncredited Inker: George Klein

Uncredited Colours: Stan Goldberg

Uncredited Letterer: John Duffy

One of my favourite conceits about the Marvel universe is the way that Marvel Comics themselves exist in their own universe. The general setup is that Marvel heroes license their images and adventures to Marvel Comics, who then publish comics based on these, which are usually almost completely identical to the ones we read. There have been some wonderful stories involving this across the years, a particular favourite of mine being The Thing #7 from 1984, where Ben heads over to the Marvel bullpen to protest the poor nature of one of his issues.

So, every now and again, we’re going to see Marvel Comics in The Fantastic Four, and we’ll take a look at them as they appear.

Here, Reed brings along some comics with him when he visits the Skrull spaceship, and manages to pass them off as surveillance intelligence and, incredibly, averts an alien invasion! The art of Kirby and Ditko has arguably never been so important!